by Dima Zales
Feeling like a squeezed lemon, I get into bed and instantly pass out.
My eyes are closed in the most delicious kiss of my life.
Lithe fingers spread electricity as they stroke my face.
Our tongues are dancing foxtrot, then samba, then swing.
To say that I’m aroused would be an understatement. This to regular horniness is like Mozart’s concerto is to the ice-cream truck jingle.
His palms are now on my back, causing it to arch as the warm energy spreads along my spine.
What’s happening to me? This is just a kiss.
Suppressing a moan, I forget rationality as blood pounds in my eardrums, and my face, neck, and chest burn with all the millions of blood vessels dilating.
There’s a physical and mental tension growing in me, and I’m on the verge of begging him for something—though I’m too hazy to know what that something is.
“Are you okay with this?” murmurs the sexiest voice I’ve ever heard.
It’s as though all the arousals of my life have combined into one burst, as if the last two years of abstinence have turned into two hundred.
In short, I become a teenage boy.
“Yes,” I say—or maybe whimper—but then I realize I have no idea what “this” actually is. What if he just wants to alphabetize my magic book collection?
The fingers unbutton the top of my shirt, and it’s the best idea anyone has ever had. Hell, I want him to rip off the rest of it. My clothing is a constricting straightjacket against my skin, one I can’t escape despite all my skills.
Then he kisses my neck, and the sensation rips through me in an explosive wave. All the muscles in my body spasm as one, then quiver violently as he moves his kisses to my shoulder.
A vague sense of danger forms somewhere deep under the flood of endorphins. If I’m reacting so strongly to a mere kiss, what will happen once we get to second base?
He gently nibbles on my earlobe, and the pleasure grows so intense that the worry drifts closer to the surface—only to be drowned by another wave of bliss.
His lips move on to my clavicle bone, and a new explosion rockets through my flesh, making my body thrash around in his arms. The sense of danger is but a distant memory, yet some rational part of me wonders if I’m having the strangest seizure in the history of medicine.
“We should stop,” is what I want to say, but an orgasmic moan is wrenched from my lips instead.
I grow weaker as the next wave of ecstasy overloads every nerve ending.
I realize that I’m about to pass out… from kissing.
The new explosion goes supernova, and my world fades to black.
Chapter Ten
I wake with a start and jackknife into a sitting position.
The dark outlines of my room calm my breathing, but my heart rate is still through the roof. Also, I’m still as horny as a rhinoceros in heat.
I reach into my night dresser for Copperfield (my nickname for a Hitachi magic wand “massager”), but growing anger stops me from utilizing my trusty friend.
It’s bad enough I haven’t gotten vision dreams when I’ve needed them, but now I’m having wet dreams instead?
Or was it a vision?
Just as importantly, who was that in my dream?
Nero again?
The voice didn’t sound like my boss’s distinctive deep growl, but then again, who knows how it would sound in a dream?
Flushing, I put Copperfield away.
There’s no way I’m going there with Nero’s image in my mind.
I look at the clock.
It’s two in the morning, which makes it officially the weekend. No wonder I feel like I could sleep ten more hours.
Recalling the upcoming gun range excursion with Ariel, I realize I might not have that luxury, so I lie back down, determined to get as much sleep as I can.
I cuddle under the blankets, trying to drive the dream from my mind, but it’s another hour before sleep graces me with its presence again.
The gun range smells of testosterone and gunpowder, and there are posters of guns and mentions of the Second Amendment everywhere.
The few dudes who are here at eleven a.m. (a.k.a. crack of dawn) on a Saturday stare at Ariel with awe that borders on drooling—which is to be expected, I guess. Besides being gorgeous, she’s a regular at this place and can probably shoot them all under the table.
We’re approaching the large gun display when someone in the other room fires his weapon. Even with the earplugs stuck deep into my ears and special earmuffs over that, the bang is louder than a dentist’s drill—and about as fun.
“Pick a gun, any gun,” Ariel says. Or at least I assume that’s what she says—it’s hard to hear over the safety gear. To make sure I understand, she temptingly waves her hand over a display case of weapons that all look nearly identical to me.
“A revolver?” I shout and point at the smallest one I can see. “What kind is that?”
“Ah,” the guy behind the counter shouts back. “A great choice.”
He then screams out a spiel about the gun, but even though his volume is high, I still only register two things: that this is an example of the classic Smith & Wesson J-Frame revolver, and that the caliber is .38, the smallest they carry.
I tug on Ariel’s sleeve. “Is that caliber going to be good enough for an—”
A harsh, unbearable pain stops me cold before I can utter the word “orc.” It’s over very quickly, but in that moment, it felt like someone stabbed me all over with needles.
Ariel eyes me worriedly and waves toward my invisible-to-everyone-besides-us Mandate aura.
Of course.
I nearly broke the Mandate by saying the word “orc.” Like vampires and other types of Cognizant, orcs are beings that mere humans aren’t supposed to know about.
Maybe I got lucky this time. Ariel bled from her eyes, mouth, and ears when she nearly broke the pact of silence enforced by the Mandate. Wiping under my nose, I confirm that I dodged the more severe bleeding phase of the Mandate discouragement program.
I’ll have to watch what I say a lot more carefully going forward, since the Mandate is so overzealous. The word “orc” is part of pop culture, and the guy would’ve surely taken my question as a joke instead of suddenly believing in orcs—
“This caliber might not put down a bear,” Ariel says. “For that, you would need something like that .44 magnum.” She points at a large revolver. “It’s what Clint Eastwood used in Dirty Harry.”
“It’s the size of my forearm,” I mutter. “I’d have to start carrying a messenger bag to hide a weapon that huge.” Realizing I’m planning an illegal activity out loud, I look at the guy as innocently as I can and add, “Hypothetically.”
The guy winks at me and makes air quotes. “Hypothetically. Of course.”
“Okay,” I say firmly. “I’ll try out the magnum.”
“Are you sure?” the guy asks as he and Ariel exchange annoyingly knowing smiles. “This has a pretty strong recoil.”
“I can take anything you can,” I say and look at both of them, wondering why Ariel is putting up with (and participating in) what seems to be, at the core, a sexist attitude.
Then I recall her super-strength, and some of my bravado deflates.
Solemnly, the guy takes the behemoth weapon out and shows it to me. The gun has a morbid beauty to it.
If I ever wanted a weapon that would look great on stage, this big boy would do really well.
Done with the demo, the sales guy designates each of us a lane, and Ariel eagerly starts firing the gun she brought for the occasion while I get a lesson.
After the guy is done explaining the basics to me, he warns me to watch out for “strong recoil” again, and I find myself standing in the proper position and preparing to aim the thick barrel at a paper target.
The target is much, much smaller than one of the orcs, so if I can hit that, I should hit an orc, no problem.
My heartbeat speeds
up.
Holding death in your hands like this turns out to be surprisingly exciting.
I feel powerful. As though someone should step in and stop me, but no one does.
I can see why Ariel comes here so often.
“Lean forward,” the guy shouts, and I comply. “Always keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire.”
Since my right eye is my dominant one, I use it to line up the rear and front sights, leaving the target a little blurry. Unsurprisingly, aiming a gun isn’t the same as knife throwing.
Trying to calm the excited shaking of my hands as much as I can, I hold my breath and squeeze the trigger.
The air is knocked out of my lungs as the boom shakes the gun range to its foundation. The kickback makes me nearly drop the weapon.
It’s as though an ancient cannon just unloaded in my hands.
Ariel and the guy are looking at me with smirks on their faces, so I grit my teeth and pretend not to feel the pain in my wrists.
Face as close to placid as I can manage, I aim again.
Because I now know what to expect, my heart is hammering even faster, but I ignore the jitters and shoot again.
Though I’m steadier on my feet this time around, the recoil hurts even worse—perhaps because I tensed up?
I curse under my breath. To call this recoil “strong” is an understatement.
I shoot again.
The pain is easier to tolerate this time—that or my hands are going numb. If the Council hadn’t forbidden me from performing illusionism, I’d probably need to worry about developing every sleight-of-hand artist’s biggest fear—carpal tunnel syndrome.
Deciding to push myself, I go through the rest of the six rounds as quickly as I can.
When I ask for a reload, the guy looks at me with a hint of respect.
The second round isn’t easier, but I start to feel more comfortable with the weapon.
On the third reload of my gun, Ariel stops her own practice and comes over to look at me with almost maternal pride.
“That’s enough for the first time,” she says after I go through my last six rounds. “Let’s see how you did.”
The guy pulls in my paper target and calculates my hit ratio to be forty percent.
“That’s really not bad,” Ariel says as she examines the holes in the target’s chest and head. “Especially for the first time.”
Maybe it’s the financial analyst in me, but I understand that hit rate to mean I would miss more than half of my shots. That’s not good to me, but who am I to argue with an ex-soldier?
Taking out my phone, I snap a picture of my very first target, trying—and failing—to feel any pride. Then I look at the phone’s clock and realize I should soon head to my meeting with Dr. Hekima.
“I’ll take you there, of course,” Ariel says when I remind her about my plans. “We just need to make a quick stop here in New Jersey on the way.”
She must mean the illegal gun purchase.
Great. Can’t wait.
We get back into Ariel’s Hummer. A gift from her dad, this car brings Ariel joy that seems to be directly proportional to the thing’s gasoline consumption. Part of the reason my friend is so broke all the time is the exuberant parking fee she has to pay to our landlord—or I guess I should say “Nero,” given Felix’s earlier revelation.
We drive for a half hour, during which I surreptitiously massage my hands. Not that Ariel would notice if I did it openly. She seems to be in one of her strange, laser-focused driving modes, where she pays attention to the road and nothing else. When she’s like this, she doesn’t talk or reply to questions. I think it has something to do with her tour in the army, so I haven’t pried much. Everything related to her service is a minefield.
Finally, she parks next to a building that looks like a haunted house turned into a crack distribution center.
“Wait here,” she says when she sees me gingerly unstrapping my safety belt. “I’ll be back soon.”
I lock all the doors and wait, wondering how ironic it would be if I got killed in the process of buying a gun that was meant to protect me from this very scenario.
After what feels like the longest ten minutes of my life, Ariel waltzes out of the haunted crack house with a noticeable bounce in her step.
“This is your Jubilee gift,” she says, opening an oily brown paper bag to take out a gun that’s identical to the one I just played with on the range. “Please use it wisely.”
“Not sure having this thing is that wise,” I say, but can’t help taking the gun from her reverently.
“It is when you’re up against orcs.” Ariel hands me a box of bullets. “Like I said before, let’s hope you have it and don’t need it.”
“Sure,” I say. In my best announcer voice, I enunciate, “I shall call it Harry.”
“After Dirty Harry?” Ariel starts the car. “Or Harry Potter?”
“After Harry Houdini.” I put the Queens address into my phone GPS and place the phone into the window holder. “Obviously.”
As we get on the highway, I put Harry and most of the bullets in the glove compartment, leaving a single bullet in my hand. When Ariel isn’t looking, I experiment with it for sleight of hand.
As it turns out, some of the sleights that work for coins work just as well for a .45 caliber bullet.
At first, I simply practice what it feels and looks like to really transfer a bullet from one hand to another. I find that this kind of exercise makes sure the moves look as natural as my real movements. Then, I try the old classic move called “the French drop,” where I hold the bullet between my thumb and first two fingertips of the right hand and let the left hand pretend to take the bullet, while in reality, the bullet drops to remain palmed in the right hand. From that starting point, I develop a variation of what’s called a “Retention of Vision Vanish,” where you let the bullet (or coin) shine in the hand that supposedly took the object, and the spectators swear on their mother’s health that the object must be in the hand in question, because they “saw it” go there. Then I try to do the move with my eyes closed, then with—
“This is your stop,” Ariel says, and I realize I got so absorbed in my bullet sleight-of-hand practice that I didn’t even notice when she parked the Hummer.
“Hold on to this bullet for me,” I tell Ariel, and do a move for her so that the bullet seems to be in my right hand.
“Sure,” she says and extends her palm.
When I open my empty hand and no bullet falls out, Ariel gasps out loud.
Recovering quickly (she’s seen me do something like this with many small objects), she says, “Good job. Just please don’t pull bullets out of little kids’ ears. We wouldn’t want you to end up on some list.”
Not dignifying her dig with a reply, I pocket the bullet and head into the building in front of us.
“I’m here to see Dr. Hekima,” I say to the flabby security guard in the lobby.
“He’s expecting you,” the man says. “Just go straight to class.”
I verify where “class” is, and in a few minutes, I find myself on the fifth floor, “in class.”
I’m not sure where the moniker “class” came from, given how much of a dump this place is. It seems better suited for the Glue Sniffers Anonymous support group on those days when they can’t find a better location. With folding chairs against the walls, a stale coffee pot station, and peeling wall paint, it doesn’t resemble a classroom at all, and is overall lacking in the classiness department.
A man—the only person in the room—gets up from one of the folding chairs with a warm smile. “Hello, Sasha. I’m Dr. Hekima.”
If Morgan Freeman were cast to play Albert Einstein (and hey, if he can play God, he can play Einstein), the result might look a lot like Dr. Hekima, right down to the wild gray hair and the blaze of intelligence in the man’s eyes.
“Hi,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”
“Take a chair.” Dr. Hekima shuffles back to
his chair and carefully sits.
I try to take the least worn of the folding chairs and settle on one that has only a slightly buckled seat with traces of paint still clinging to it. Ignoring the spider web attached to the back of the seat, I unfold the chair in the middle of the room with a loud screech and sit down.
“Now,” Dr. Hekima says. “You have a choice to make.”
“A choice?” I fold my arms across my chest. “What choice?”
“You can start with the new class in the next semester, a few months from now,” he says in that soothing, slightly accented voice. “Or you can start tomorrow, in which case you will have only missed a few lectures.”
“Can we take a few steps back, please?” I unfold my arms. “Maybe start with an explanation of what Orientation actually is?”
“Of course,” Dr. Hekima says with a smile. The word “explanation” seems to make the man practically giddy. “Orientation is an institution at which instruction is given to new members of the Cognizant community.”
“Like Sunday school?” I ask warily, repeating Felix’s words.
“The only commonality we have is that we meet on Sundays.” He pushes his power specs higher up the bridge of his nose with a practiced poke of his middle finger—clearly unaware of how much the gesture looks like flipping the bird. “Orientation doesn’t have a direct equivalent in the human educational system.”
“So what kind of things do you teach?” I look around the dingy room but see no Cognizant equivalent of the periodic table, or even a map of the globe. “More importantly, if I join tomorrow, what will I have missed?”
“Hmm.” He pulls out his phone and consults some kind of notes. “Ah. Yes. We covered the history of the Mandate system,” he says in a professorial tone, eyes not leaving the screen. “Relatedly, we also went over the necessity of keeping Cognizant existence hidden.” He looks up, more animated. “We thoroughly discussed the religious, philosophical, political, and other implications should the secrecy of our species be penetrated one day—a topic that always generates very good class participation. This time around, we took some scenarios from human fiction, from X-Men to the Jedi, and—”